Learning the 'rules of the game': reconciling our rules based culture with creativity

One of the biggest philosophical tensions I have felt in leading a kura towards a vision as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence' is what on the surface is the apparent conflict between our rules based culture and creativity. When creativity apparently demands the ability to think outside the square, to break the rules, it seems odd then (maybe even implausible) that we can do so when schools have so many 'rules'. It is a regular kōrero with some students .. 'why do I have to follow these rules, XXX (insert appropriate issue here) doesn't affect my learning'.

Perhaps it's all about the 'rules of the game'.

This has played on my mind. I have managed to come up with two arguments that reconcile these tensions. The first had been founded in what might turn out to be an 'urban myth', but I am still left wondering about the validity of the sentiment anyway. The story went like this.

Source: https://www.truthorfiction.com/margaret-mead-femur-quote/

I have had conversations with quite a few young people over the years in which I retold this story, making the point that for a group of hunter gatherer people to do this, there must have been some tacit agreement about how they would cooperate to 'feed the passenger', someone who was unable to do their share of hunting or gathering to feed themselves. Now there is a good argument to say that this story about Margaret Mead never happened. I'll go with that, but I still think there is some validity in the sentiment, and I would suggest that no group can be successful unless there is some tacit agreement about the rules that are necessary to ensure success. Regardless of the nature of the group - armed offenders squad, motorcycle gang, army platoon, school - I would posit that all groups need rules that are generally agreed upon and upheld if they are to be successful. If we then take the broader view of our purpose as schools, if we allow young people to walk out of our gates not understanding this need to follow a prescribed set of rules for success, then we have failed  in a very profound way. We have not equipped those young people to take their place in society. Maybe the devil is in the detail about exactly what the rules should be, and how we agree upon and enforce them?

There is another argument that I rehearse in my mind that reconciles a rules based culture in support of creativity.

If we accept that creativity is founded on deep knowledge of a particular 'discipline', implicit in that deep knowledge  must be an understanding of the rules of the discipline. What's more, if we intend to break the rules in a specific discipline in order to develop creative solutions, there is an argument that we need to know what those rules are. I'm less convinced by that last statement, but think that it is worth considering.

This takes me back to the latter years when I was teaching economics to senior students. I had fallen out of love with my discipline. I saw so many examples in which the theory and models I taught failed to match the real world. In order to continue to teach this material (required in NCEA standards) I would explain to students that the world needed them to challenge the orthodoxy, to challenge the rules, but in order to do so they needed to understand what those rules were in the first place. They needed deep knowledge of the theory and the models before they could critique them in any meaningful way (not that such a requirement seems to apply to journalists and politicians these days). It helped me, anyway.

So, where does this leave us? In my own mind I have been able to reconcile the rules based nature of kura as organisations and communities, with a vision that values and seeks to develop and grow creativity and creative thinking. Maybe I'm fooling myself?

Is creativity hard wired?

Our most fundamental survival instinct is fight or flight. Within that context I am going to make a bold, uninformed claim: all human beings are hard wired to be creative. Why? Our very survival over the millenia has come down to our ability to flee from or to confront those existential dangers, those things that threaten our survival,  to our ability to creatively solve problems. 

If that contention is correct (it seems reasonable, but how often have things that seemed reasonable subsequently been shown to be utter tosh?) then for kura I would have thought a big question continues to be 'how do we nurture, feed, encourage, inspire, that creativity in every one of our students?'. I would have thought that we WOULD want to, since our students are the future, if I may use a well and truly hackneyed/over used cliche.

A stroll through our creative spaces, Te Pai Tūhura, gave me the opportunity to 'feast my eyes' on some gobsmackingly good mahi, the result of good teaching, combined with of all of those processes of engagement, of the opportunity work in good facilities, from our senior DVC (Design and Visual Communications) students.

Students created 3D virtual fly throughs of their projects

Our DVC teacher Oscar Richardson (a trained architect in a previous life) tells me this is effectively Stage 1 Architecture School work.... high praise indeed.  This is creative work, this is excellent work, this is a fabulous example of 'creative excellence'. To produce work like this also requires students and staff to have a good values foundation, and this work certainly demonstrates our values of commitment, achievement, resilience, and respect.

This stuff doesn't happen by accident. This stuff doesn't 'just happen'. It happens because we hold high expectations of all of our learners, it happens because we have good teaching taking place in good facilities. It happens because we are committed to Mana Orite, the need for equity for all learners regardless of background.

It also happens because we have clarity of vision about what we are 'about' as a kura, and because we have clarity around our foundational pedagogy 'Learn, Create, Share', which captures the centrality of creativity to learning, and implicitly to equity and wellbeing. 

Three words keep ringing in my head, three words that simply won't go away: clarity, coherence, and persistence, and I think that accurately describes a significant part of what good leadership looks like. Our staff know the story.. 'stay on the bus', as per the 'Helsinki bus theory.

Is creativity 'hard wired' into us as a survival instinct? I have noiidea, but it is an idea that appeals eh!!

When you build a kura culture of creativity

Teachers have always been creative to some degree. Our teaching team at Hornby is creative. I'd like to think they may even be more creative than the norm. I'd like t think that they may be because we use a pedagogy that has creativity at its heart (our Manaiakalani kaupapa, and our pedagogy of 'learn, create, share') and and because we pursue creativity as our vision. It may be that by making creativity explicit our staff feel that they are given tacit or explicit permission to be creative.

I see it in many many things that our team members do, not just our teacher4s, and this week I had the absolute privilege of seeing this example from Michael, who is one of our visual arts team. This example is special (they all are, by the way), because Michael is a visual artist, with no real training in literacy teaching. 

Yet he has accepted the challenge to support his learners with their literacy, in this case their writing. He is upskilling himself in this mahi, and he is synthesising others' ideas to create resources that he thinks will support improved writing from his learners.

In this case he morphs visual arts prompts with writing, in this scaffold (he has now created a series of these as a part of a prolonged piece of mahi to support learners' growth. I love the resource, I love the passion, and I love the philosophy. It shows a teacher who sees himself as a learner, as we all are.  It shows a teacher embracing his own inner creativity to support our learners. 

This is the power of having a strong, easily understood, often articulated, vision focused on creativity: he puna auaha a centre of creativity. We end up with creativity permeating all that we do.

And the most amazing thing of all? He is not alone. We have a whole team filled with this ethos. This is how you build a culture of creativity, and this is how you support that improved learner wellbeing, those improved academic outcomes, for learners that is the promise when you put creativity at the centre.

DigiAwards and 'Learn Create Share'

For 5 plus years now I've sat on the GCSN (Greater Christchurch Schools' Network) Trust Board offering a secondary principal's voice to their wonderful work. Their focus is on bridging the digital divide for those in the greater Christchurch area for whom this is an obstacle.

Last week I went along to the annual DigiAwards ceremony. This was a first for me. The awards are organised by CORE Education, and GCSN is one of three sponsors of the award this year (with the Ministry of Education, and SchoolDocs). Students from Year 1 to 8 put forward their work capturing their learning in digital form. The event got me thinking.

You can use these links to se what DigiAwards is all about

I have to admit that as I sat there, I was channeling Elwyn Richardson.

Had Elwyn been teaching in this digital age, I think he'd have been right in there, in the Digiawards.

The work I saw was a direct, deliberate, and outstanding, example of our Manaiakalani kaupapa 'learn, create, share'. These children of varying ages had created digital learning objects, and these were shared via the DigiAwards platform. I'm not sure how else they were shared, perhaps with communities, with whānau? I hope they were shared with those authentic audiences out there. But the DLO's were created with the express purpose of sharing the children's learning. The children there on the night last week received direct feedback from an appreciative audience. You could see the pride!!!

With my Manaiakalani hat on, I have probably sounded a little like that proverbial 'broken record' to my colleagues around the GCSN Board table, but my most persistent comment has been on the need to ensure that schools have clarity around the pedagogy that they are employing as they embrace digital transformation in education. There is I suspect ample evidence that doing so without a sound pedagogical underpinning is mostly doomed to failure (I haven't gone out there and looked at the evidence, I haven't done the research, but those media articles you see about the negative impact of digital technology on learning are I suspect mostly founded in those 'give 'em all a device and we'll transform their learning' schools.)

Where and I going with this 'ramble'?

The DigiAwards has, possibly unintentionally, highlighted what is achieved with the 'learn create share' pedagogy.  There is certainly scope to expand the 'share' component. For example, do these schools use blogging as a tool? Edublogs, and age appropriate moderated tool, is sitting right there waiting. And there is creativity sitting front and centre for our learners.

I'd love to see the achievement data for those children who participated. Our Manaiakalani network captures some of the most comprehensive data in the country on the impact of 'Learn Create Share'. We accelerate writing at twice national averages. We accelerate reading and maths at 1.5x the national averages. 

If as I am suggesting those students engaged in the DigiAwards are effectively getting a dose of our Manaiakalani medicine, if they are effectively experiencing 'learn create share', what impact could we have system wide if this were rolled out to more schools? Do we actually have teachers who unknowingly have embraced 'learn create share'? I am always attracted to the concept of system wide change and improvement. Could it be that experiences as simple as DigiAwards could do that?

What I do know is that I'll be pushing our Uru Mānuka cluster to engage fully with Digiawards in 2023.

Arguing the case for creativity in Hornby High school's journey

Extract from this year's senior prize giving speech:

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I will beg your patience as I perhaps indulge in a little more reflection than is usual at this time of year, but this will be my last prize giving at Hornby High School, and there is much to reflect upon. When I finish at the end of term 1 2023, I will have been Principal for seven years. That’s a long time, it’s seven years spent in what a good friend and colleague rightly in my opinion describes as the best job ever.

In that time we have rebuilt the physical fabric of Hornby High School. More significantly we have re-invented Hornby High School as a different place. In doing this, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to ‘stand on the shoulders of a giant’ in Mr Dick Edmondson, my predecessor, who did much of the hard mahi so that I might do the cool mahi. I am  also grateful to the Board who took a chance on me as a new Principal. I hope that I have been able in some measure to lead our kura on its journey of improvement with the bold vision and leadership which I think you sought.

He puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence. What a bold, gutsy vision for a kura. And you are perhaps subconsciously asking yourself why? It is my fervently held evidenced based belief that one of the keys to improvement in schools is creativity. There is now ample evidence to show a focus on creativity supports improved well being and improved academic outcomes for learners.

It’s odd, really. I used to be an economics teacher, with a bit of maths and accounting on the side, and back in the day there didn’t seem to be too much scope for creativity. I think I was a reasonable teacher (my students seemed to think so). When thinking of my own teaching I was reminded of this story.

Pablo Casals, the famous Spanish cellist who lived to be 97 years of age, when he reached 95, was interviewed by a young reporter who threw him a question: “Mr. Casals, you are 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived. Why do you still practice six hours a day?” And Mr. Casals answered, “Because I think I'm making progress.” 

This all focuses the mind on the really really big question: what is the purpose of schools? In decades past the answer was to create nice compliant little units of production, worker bees if you like, who could do simple mechanical jobs, who did exactly as they were told unquestioningly, took as few breaks as possible, and were therefore highly productive. Gosh what good chappies they all were.

However today, technology is replacing a lot of the tasks that people were being ‘educated’ for over the 150 years of public education in Aotearoa. So what?

My ‘reckon’ is that this leaves us with a need to focus on what makes us human. For my money, it’s the ability to empathise with and relate to other human beings, and the ability to be creative, although there is technology that is now challenging that too.

As we progress as a species, we face ever more complex problems that are often of our own making. How do we solve those problems? We don’t solve them by being nicely compliant units that never think outside the square. We solve them by being creative, by thinking outside the square, and by being kind and empathetic towards our fellow human beings.

Now before you launch into me about what schools should teach, let’s be clear about this. You need to know stuff in order to be creative. You need to be literate and numerate, and you have to have subject knowledge. You can’t think in a vacuum, you can’t think unless you have stuff to think about. I have a fabulous example. A good friend of mine is a fresh water biologist. In his work they need to know what species live in freshwater streams. In the past they’d take water samples, look at them under a microscope, and see what they could see. He teamed up with a geneticist. They each had their specialist knowledge. They figured out that by taking  a couple of water samples, and analyzing the DNA fragments in the water, they could get a more accurate picture of what stream life there was, and at a far lower cost. They each brought their deep specialist knowledge to the problem, and developed a new creative solution. You have to KNOW STUFF.

I don’t think it's too important what vehicle you use to develop creativity either. Every subject can do it. Whether it’s the creative or performing arts, technology, writing and literature, sciences, maths .. It’s possible everywhere. How do you think mathematicians develop and prove new theorems? Creativity!!! I was so thrilled this year to see our first ever creative maths week. I contributed my own wee pieces, some of you may recall, with a series of limericks about maths.

If creativity is to be allowed to develop, we require quite a few personal characteristics, but I suspect they are not what you think. One that we try to focus on across the school is the willingness to take risks with our learning. Every time you put something out there you take a risk, the risk of being criticized. I write free verse poetry. I wrote this last week, while thinking about creativity in schools. You are the first people to hear it. In reading it to you, I am taking a risk. Think about that.

Te puna auaha

Sit

for a while

stare

long eyed

into the distance,

stare

at nothing,

from where you draw 

splashes of

red and blue,

melancholy notes,

cogs and codes

and props and words,

sworls and smiles

and scientific guile,

let your mind wander

along the endless 

winding trails

feel the thrill as you

tack before the fiercest winds

allow yourself to

soak in the

steaming warmth 

of the deepest

tub.

Breathe,

sit 

for a while

stare

dream

imagine

te puna auaha

I have come to the conclusion that creativity in schools is less a series of prescribed outcomes than a way of being, a state of mind, in which we nurture and encourage risk taking, lateral, critical, and creative thinking, and a preparedness to simply ‘be’, to stare into that nothingness. We seem unlikely to solve the world’s new problems with old ways of thinking. Those old ways of thinking perhaps largely created the problems we face today.

As I prepare to leave Hornby High School I know that the job is not finished. It will never be finished. However I can step back knowing that we have made great progress. This has so far been a 15 year journey. There is plenty more to come, plenty more mahi to do, and plenty more scope for improvement.

The road ahead is not  however set to be a smooth one. Reactionary social and political forces are gathering and I fear they will drive us back to that time in the not too distant past when measuring student achievement was seen as the cure-all for educational performance. When I taught here at Hornby in the 90’s I had the privilege of working with Mr Henry Sunderland who at that time was Head of Art. He used to say ‘we spend too much time weighing the pig and not enough time feeding it’. Educational attainment is not improved by continuous measurement. Educational attainment is improved when we improve the material living condition of people, when we grow positive relationships for learning, and when we inspire curiosity and creativity.

Every year I make mention of the amazing Manaiakalani kaupapa of which we are a part. The ‘Learn Create Share‘ pedagogy, founded as it is in Universal Design for Learning, is simple and in its simplicity so much more powerful. It is NO coincidence that the word ‘create’ sits at the centre of our Manaiakalani pedagogy ‘learn create share’. It is NO coincidence that our vision is ‘he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence’. Our own evidence continues to accumulate about the impact of those factors. Our NCEA achievement is slowly increasing. Our NCEA endorsement rates have doubled. Our roll has grown 25% in 6 years. 

I was talking last week to Dorothy Burt, one of the leaders of the Manaiakalani mahi. She had been invited to the GELP conference, a major global conference of key educational decision makers: Ministers, Secretaries of Education etc. She related that in talking with some of these global influencers they had made the point that simplicity is key. One commented that with 3 million teachers to take along on the journey of change and improvement, complexity is to be avoided. It was interesting that Dorothy had been invited to speak at this prestigious conference because of the growing global recognition of Manaiakalani as one of the most significant and impactful educational initiatives on the globe.

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The optimal adaptivity corridor and teacher creativity

Last week I attended the annual Manaiakalani Principals' wānanga, always a fantastic event, and the biggest yet. During the morning Dr Rebecca Jesson presented, with her usual array of evidence informed commentary and provocation, one of many aspects of this mahi that I absolutely love. In her presentation. she presented this model of professional growth.

I'd not seen this before, and before it disappeared into distant memory I wanted make sense of it, and contextualise it within my 'creativity' paradigm. What I'm about to say isn't a claim to 'correctness', but me trying to check that I have this right. I may not have!!!

When new teachers first begin, they try to innovate, but don't yet have the sorts of structures and routines that are good practice sufficiently embedded so that their innovation can 'grow wings and fly'. The result is the 'frustrated novice'. 

However the net result of developing the sorts of structures and routines necessary, but not pairing this with innovation or creativity, is the 'expert at routines'.

Professional growth along the 'optimal creativity corridor' occurs when the development of expert routines is paired with growing innovation or creativity.

My first 'reckon' on this is that in teaching (maybe most professions?) most teachers make it as far as the 'expert at routines', they introduce a little innovation or creativity (yes I know that these are technically different things) into their practice. They follow the red arrow on this next diagram.

I would like to suggest that, with an extant workforce, the more desirable path is one where as those routines are embedded, there is a growing amount of innovation and creativity that appears in teacher practice. The red arrows below are my attempt at describing what I think is perhaps the optimal pathway. 

Perhaps in an ideal world new entrants into the profession would simply head straight up the 'optimal adaptive corridor'.  My suspicion however is that this is not as likely in teaching. We enter the profession because we want to help, and once we see that we start  to make a difference, perhaps we become increasingly risk averse, for fear of losing the gains we have started to make. 

After all, innovating, being creative, requires a degree of risk taking (that's why its development is one of our areas of strategic intent at Hornby High School,) and by definition when we take risks there is the possibility of failure. But as I have said to our staff in the past: "you know what? That's okay!!!!".

This 'just enough' student progress paradigm may be the equivalent of the Bounded Rationality Model in decision making, in which we tend to gather what we think is 'just enough' information before making a decision.

(Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmanagement/chapter/11-3-understanding-decision-making/ )

I am suggesting that maybe we see ourselves making what we think is just enough of a difference, and we stop innovating at that point. What we want (I reckon) is the 'Creative' model, but notice that this requires that you 'have time to immerse yourself in the issues'.

Anyway, I digress. We have an extant workforce, we have our Manaiakalani kaupapa, at Hornby High School we increasingly see the need, the driver, for creativity, and my contention (unsupported by any evidence) is that these all come together if/when we drive teacher creativity. How do we do this? I have arrived back at my current OCD: what are the deliberate acts of leadership that will create and nurture creativity in our kura? I've already written on a number of those, and here's another one ... the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme.

We do our tauira a huge service when we support and nurture teacher professional creativity, and MIT is an outstanding way to do that, an outstanding vehicle to do that. 

It was a pleasure to sit and listen to presentations from this year's MIT teachers from across the motu. Their mahi was wide ranging and varied, but the commonality was teachers who were prepared to be creative, to try new things. What's more the MIT programme offers time for these teachers to immerse themselves in this stuff, that time to slow down. to engage in Peter O'Connor and Claudia Rozas Gomez' 'Slow Wonder'.

Our Manaiakalani kaupapa, our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, shouldn't just apply to our rangatahi.  These need to be a mindset, a way of being, for everyone in our kura, regardless of their 'formal role'.

I do think most teachers want to indulge their creativity in order to improve things for their learners. I just 'reckon' that we are a very risk averse group of people, because we think the stakes are too high to fail. Problem is the stakes are too high not to try.

Creativity, focus, engagement .. all there for everyone to see

 I have previously written on the idea that you get what you constantly think about. Similarly you see what you constantly look for. Today I wandered through our tech and arts spaces, simply wandering as I love to do. It keeps me connected, chatting with students and staff, and looking at the awesome mahi they are doing. These photos were typical of what I saw. Now you can argue that this is what you'd expect to see in these spaces, and I hope that's true.  It was reassuring to see it, the absolute evidence of creative endeavour, but also to see the level of engagement of the students. The students in the photos below were absolutely typical of what I saw everywhere I walked, as is almost always the case.

Product of a 'wearable arts' unit

Similarly 'wearable arts'

Senior students focussed on their visual arts portfolios

Virtual reality and world creation, with our awesome 'Creatives in Schools' teacher Dr Claire Hughes

I've also written before that technical knowledge and skill are an essential precursor to creativity. You have to 'know' stuff before you can engage in higher order thinking, before you can be creative .. here some trigonometry in the engineering workshop. In the 'real world' knowledge isn't silo'd. Bodies of knowledge 'integrate'.

Senior 'Design and Visual Communication' students are required to build architectural models of their designs. Here those models can be seen in development, where the technology of laser cutting has been integrated to give 3D rendering to the design work.

A technology project developed in conjunction with Josh and the ChCh City Libraries team, in which students are designing and building a 60's arcade game and machine (with some funding from GCSN - Greater Christchurch Schools Network .. many thanks GCSN)

The outputs and outcomes for these students are of a very high quality. That's what you get when you focus on creativity. That's what the research evidence says. When students are required to 'create', they are giving form to their learning, they are reinforcing their learning, and by sharing their end products they create the classic design thinking feedback loop that accelerates learning and achievement. This is the very stuff of our Manaiakalani kaupapa, or our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy. It's also a core tenet of the UDL (Universal design for Learning) framework.

It's not that this stuff doesn't happen elsewhere. It's not that it can't happen elsewhere. It's just that when you make the creativity explicit, when you more deliberate and intentional about using creativity as a 'lever' that you can pull to support learning, you are much more likely to get these outcomes, you are much more likely to get agentic learners, learners who are engaged, learners who are learning!!! 

It's what you get when you have a simple vision grounded in the research on the impact of creativity in education, and it's what you get when you have a dedicated committed staff who understand and share the vision. 'He puna auaha a centre of creative excellence' has power and impact in education.

Creativity, focus and engagement .. all there for everyone to see.

System change and 'Slow Wonder'

At the end of term, teachers typically feel.. well ... bloody exhausted, actually. In a social media post at the end of last term I said this:

After over 40 years in education I have come to learn that the lethargy we feel in that first week after the  end of term, that inability to 'get out of our own way', that insurmountable difficulty we face when attempting to tackle.. well, anything really ... , that inability to do more than sit on the couch and stare blank eyed, is not laziness. It is the consequence of the state of complete and utter exhaustion in the midst of which the brain is saying 'I need to stop, to rest, to let go, to shed the thousand tears I have held back for so long'. At the twilight of my career I still struggle to be gentle on myself.

We push on, however, struggling as I said to be gentle on ourselves. Emerging from that state could perhaps be likened to walking through a dense fog. After a while the morning sun begins to get the better of the fog, visibility increases ever so gradually, and the sunlight manages to break through now and then, bathing the landscape in the beautiful golden glow that is the hope of the new morning.

In the first week of this latest term break I took a couple of hours to read this book just published by Professors Peter O'Connor, and Claudia Rozas Gomez, a book about the place of slowness, taking the time to wonder, to ponder, to gaze into nothingness, to allow the creative brain to just 'be'.

It is the sort of book I'd like to place under my pillow each night as I nod off to sleep, the sort of book I want to hold to my heart before every conversation with a child or a parent. It highlights one of the greatest tensions I have felt over the past six years of principalship, during which time we managed to 're-imagine' Hornby High School as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence'.

I am only too well aware of the 'fact' that to be creative requires amongst other things the time to simply sit, to daydream, to allow the mind to wander and wonder. It requires 'Slow Wonder'. The problem is that our industrial model schooling system leaves neither time nor space for students (or teachers) to do just that. What's more, our initial teacher education (being so outcomes focussed as driven by our Teaching Council) fails to prepare new teachers to be tolerant of this need, let alone to nurture it.

If we accept the notion that society in general needs more creativity, if we accept that nurturing creativity fuels the very things that make us human, if we accept the evidence that creativity supports enhanced wellbeing for learners, if we accept that that is the purpose of education, then it seems odd that as Sir Ken Robinson says we have succeeded in designing and building the best possible system for stamping out creativity.

Our secondary school system drives students over five or six or seven periods of learning in a day, it shifts focus from one 'subject' to another making a virtue of change and instability. It says that all outcomes must be demonstrable, visible, and of course measurable, otherwise how else will we be able to tell if we are getting 'bang for buck' for the taxpayer's dollar? How else will we know if a teacher is good or not? How else will we know whether or not a teacher is worth her or his salary? 

The question is, how do we redesign a secondary schooling system to allow students and teachers the 'time' for this 'Slow Wonder', this time to daydream, to reflect, to just sit and be?

I think there are multiple attempts across Aotearoa New Zealand at doing just that. Our own mahi has so far been founded upon building stronger relationships between teachers and students, and now creating longer blocks of time in which to undertake the mahi with (in my head, anyway) the time for teachers and learners to simply 'stop', to 'daydream', to reflect. Our own changes do feel a lot like 'tinkering around the edges', and that more self directed exploration time is in order. However I've also worked long enough with adolescents to know that they are a fascinating and unpredictable creature that requires some structure, clear boundaries, and lots of guidance. However you have to start somewhere when trying to change a system.

This is difficult, and I can't help feeling that there are large structural roadblocks in our way. I captured my thinking in this diagram.

Creativity is squeezed between the resourcing models within which we operate, and the collective contract working conditions that exist with the PPTA's collective Agreements.

Before you scream at me, I an at heart a unionist. I was one of those who took to the streets fighting the Education Amendment Bill #2 in the ver early '80's (remember that?), I was one of those who, as Branch secretary, and committed Branch member, fought for the conditions of employment we now have. It is no coincidence that in my diagram, the PPTA contract conditions are on the right hand 'jaw' of the vice, the part that doesn't move. Re-read my opening reflection on the end of term. This probably describes the state of mind and physical health of most teachers a the end of the term. Teachers have little more to give. Our future evolutions can't happen at the expense of teachers.

The answers to creating the space for the 'Slow Wonder' lie in other 'places'. They lie in more generous resourcing of secondary schools. They lie in more flexibility in how resources are used. They DON'T lie in making teachers work harder. Generally speaking, teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand have little if any more to give.

The answers aren't some sort of 'binary' choice. The answers lie in a series of reforms, most of all in my opinion in the resourcing models we have. The answers might also lie in changes to our current contract conditions which seem to suggest a low trust model of teachers. I wonder if this is a result of the 40 years of largely neo-liberal impact on education, and teacher behaviour? The changes to teacher registration for example, adopting a high trust model, have not led to some sort of collapse of the profession., som sort of serious decline in teaching standards and outcomes .... what a surprise. Teachers can be trusted!!!

Of course, I am, not naive enough to think that additional resourcing is just a stroke of the pen away. There are always multiple competing demands for that 'tax payer's dollar'. The question is, what do we value most? How do we think we can have the biggest impact on our communities, on society? How can we best create a human future in which we value and nurture our young people, our future?

Regardless of views on exactly how we engineer changes, we need to find ways of creating that time in secondary education for BOTH students AND teachers to sit, to think, to daydream. We need to value that time without looking for some sort of measurable outcome.  What better way to support our Manaiakalani kaupapa, and our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy?

We need time for 'Slow Wonder', to allow imagination to feed creativity.

Creative convergence

In the middle of term 3 I received a phone call from Jason Marsden, Centre Manager at The Hub, telling me that I was one of four recipients of this year's 'Proud to be' awards for Hornby. The awards, based on community nomination, celebrate individuals who the nominators feel have contributed to the community in their own special ways. The programme, in its fourth year, has been the 'brain child' of Jason and the team at The Hub.

My first response (and that of the other three nominees, I suspect) was very much 'surely not? why me?".

We received an exceptionally generous gift of clothing from fashion stores via The Hub, and strutted the catwalk along with other community members modelling fashion from around The Hub. 

I wrote a poem (you can read it at the end of this post) in which I tried to capture my feelings (and possibly those of each of the three of us). I have met with the other three recipients, also with Lyn and Jason from The Hub team, and Vicki the stylist and 'imaginator extraordinaire' ( I think I've just created a new word, right there). They are all amazing people, and the sense of humility I continue to feel from having been connected with all of them is deep and profound. But I have struggled to 'make sense ' of the award, and the event, since then. 

In making sense of it all, I thought about my conversations with Jason. With a physics degree under his belt he was drawn into promotions and retail management (as you do, apparently). He is a creative person, sharing with me some of his personal journey as a craft metal worker and blacksmith, and his more recent work in designing, and taking to market, an amazing wrist watch stand. Jason combines that with an astute business sense, and a strong moral imperative to 'do the right thing' for people.

Jason taking to the catwalk himself at the 2022 'Proud to be' show.

I was also mindful of conversations with Lyn and Vicki too, professionals who engage their 'creative muscle' daily in their mahi. It took me back to my own time in previous lives in which the development of creative promotions solutions was part and parcel of our daily mahi. Creative thinking often had to be 'to the fore'.

Where did all of this leave me? It left me thinking about the underlying need for creativity in our lives, about the power of creativity to impact positively on people, and also about what the possibilities might be when we connect creatively within and across the different parts of our lives, and across sectors of the community.

I am trying to understand the synergies that might exist for joint action between a community kura and its local shopping centre (or local business more generally) that might better support creativity. I have seen many initiatives tried and failed in the past. Mentors from local businesses, requests for funding for student activities, such things generally with a small impact which fades to nothing rather quickly once the individual who initiated the idea has moved on. I seem to have stumbled across these thoughts:

• The connections we do make need to be authentic and I suspect rather more spontaneous and situational. 
• There is unlikely to be much that applies universally across kura and communities, but rather will depend on the strengths and inclinations of each community and its members
• Despite that, I 'reckon' that creativity is a great basis on which to forge connections

This is the creative convergence to which I was referring in the title to this post.

Of course this all depends on there being people in your community who value creativity. In our case Jason is one such person - he values and practices it (and as I have said, he acts with a strong sense of moral purpose). Interesting isn't it that he should have around him others who similarly are creative by nature and habit. What a coincidence!! (sarcasm circuits switched on, yes). Of COURSE it's no coincidence. Jason gathers around himself people who similarly value creativity, who practice it in their daily lives. The existence of a 'creatives' programme at The Hub is NO coincidence. This builds vibrant communities, this builds communities that flourish and thrive, communities filled with individuals who support one another, individuals who are prepared to take risks.  I used the word 'thrive', and I used it deliberately and intentionally. THAT is our ultimate purpose surely. Profits, educational attainment, whatever the short term outcome, the capacity, the opportunity, to thrive is THE most important thing (I reckon!!). Isn't that why societies exist?

Our vision for our kāhui ako cluster is ""Inspiring Futures: Collaborating for Hauora & Success".  When we discuss hauora we use the terms flourishing and thriving, referring as we do the Selligman 'PERMA' model as our guide, within the context of Te Whare Tapa Whā.

I am currently reading the latest book by Professor Peter O'Connor and Claudia Rozas Gōmez 'Slow Wonder', and these words resonated:

Perhaps what frightens so many about the imagination is that it might be no more than an invisible tincture with enormous power to bring about elemental change. Perhaps it is the essence of the magnus opus, the great work that ancient alchemists understood could heal the sick and transform the searcher into a perfect philosopher. We might then understand the imagination as the elixir of life, the powder that keeps us as wise as children, that makes us live beyond our death in the art we make. For the imagination lifts us out of the everyday and turns the greyness of life a golden hue. Is the imagination, then, the means by which we might achieve life’s purpose, as Paolo Freire suggests, of becoming more fully human? James Hillman writes:

We must start, as [the alchemist] Benedictus Figulus says, in the caelum, the sky-blue firmament over our heads, the mind already in the blue of heaven, imagination opened. The blue caelum of imagination gives to the opus a rock- hard standpoint from above downward, just as firm and solid as literal physical reality. A sapphire stone already at the beginning.6 

Creativity is one of life's forces. It makes us human.  

 

How much more empathetic, how much kinder, would we be as a society if we acknowledged the power of creativity, if in action we showed that we truly valued creativity, if we nurtured creativity in whatever shape of form it exists in each of us (because it surely does)?

And so we come full circle to our Hornby High school Manaiakalani kaupapa (Learn, Create, Share) and our kura vision 'he puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence'. We are not about being ordinary, about 

supporting and sustaining the status quo. We are about being extraordinary, about getting back to the essence of our 'being', our purpose, about school, system, and societal, change. 

Lofty ideals, at a time when we need them!! I WANT to boil the ocean. 

**********************

The poem (imagine this with a Sam Hunt voice): 

The 'point of curiosity'

One of the many privileges I have in my life is the opportunity to work with amazing people on radical ideas. I have great thinkers and practitioners that I get to work with daily in our kura. Another great group is the trustees for Ako Ōtautahi - Learning City Christchurch. I am not a trustee, but I was invited to bring a secondary school perspective and voice to their mahi. Recently I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon working alongside them as they stepped back to consider their longer term strategy and goals. Leading the work was facilitator Sean, and the question (in my head, anyway) was what is a learning city, what does it look, sound, feel like, and how do we get there? What are the Trust's next steps?

During the course of discussion of one trustee's ideas, Sean used a phrase that has stuck in my head. He talked about the 'point of curiosity'. He did not mean point as in 'purpose', but rather point as in time. The phrase and the idea have sat in my head since then. Just sat. Lurking! Loitering! The word came up as something as a possible synonym for learning, or at least a metaphor, or possible a precondition for learning, something that might support the journey of Ōtautahi towards being that learning city.

https://pix4free.org/photo/14138/curiosity.html

Then yesterday I had the opportunity to unpack the data for our kura and our kāhui ako from the Creative Schools Index. The index uses 11 dimensions that the development team have established can contribute to a creative environment in schools. One of the 11 dimensions is ..... CURIOSITY!!!

Our own data shows that, as a secondary school, we possibly maintain levels of curiosity better than the average secondary school. A big question (THE BIG question?) is why. I've recorded some thinking around that here. Maybe we have found ways to identify that 'point of curiosity', much as good teachers can identify what we call 'teachable moments? 

An even bigger question is, what happens if you nurture, support, and sustain curiosity across an entire city? An even bigger question in my head is, what happens if we are deliberate and intentional about nurturing the 11 dimensions of the Creative Schools Index across a city?

The CAST team research indicates that nurturing and growing creativity in schools supports wellbeing and academic outcomes. Could it do the equivalent across a city?

• How do you identify 'points of curiosity' in a city context?
• Is a better focus for that the idea that we deliberately and intentionally create 'points of curiosity' across a city?
• Is this a way of addressing inequity in the ways in which we create those points of curiosity in different parts of a city that target those most likely to suffer from. those inequities?
• What could that look like?
• Who does it?
• How do they do that?

Who needs to step up and provide leadership in this mahi?  I think I may have just tried to 'boil the ocean'.

Celebrating increasing levels of creativity: the evidence

 It's not that I am obsessed with creativity in schools, you understand. Well, not much. Well I wasn't 20 years ago. Okay so maybe I am just a bit, now. That explains our Hornby High School vision is 'a centre of creative excellence, he puna auaha' .. sort of.

Why? I've written about this before, but my belief system leads me to the conclusion that with advancing technology it is more important than ever that, in schools,  we focus on what makes us human, and I believe that one attribute that makes us human is our inherent creativity. There is also good evidence that engaging in creative activity and thinking at school supports student wellbeing and improved academic outcomes ('Replanting creativity during post normal times', Professor Peter O’Connor, Director, Centre for Arts and Social Transformation, Professor Michael Anderson, Associate Professors Kelly Freebody and Paul Ginns, The University of Sydney, October 2020). 

We've been at this 'creativity thing' since 2017, when our vision was adopted by our Board in a move that in my opinion was visionary, and one that showed great faith. Those Board members were prepared to adopt what Euan McIntosh calls a 'BHAG', a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It aligned perfectly with our work in adopting the Manaiakalani kaupapa, and the 'learn create share' pedagogy. I've written a lot about what creativity might look like, and what it does look like, in our setting. That all begs the question 'how are we doing'?

When I was made aware of the Creative Schools Index tool, I couldn't help myself, and convinced four other schools in our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako to join us in getting students to complete the survey tool. We saw the results some months ago, but only today managed to meet online with Professor O'Connor unpack the results.

Here is something of a summary. As a group of schools our data showed the conditions required for creativity, as assessed by our students, to be well ahead of schools generally in the overall sample (something like 100 schools, so not an insignificant sample size).

In secondary schools generally the levels of 'creativity' drop off dramatically. This drop-off begins in Year 7, and becomes pronounced from Year 9 onwards. I have no problem sharing our own overall data. Bearing in mind that at this stage the comparison is with all schools in the sample, mostly primary schools, our scores are just slightly below the 'average' (technically not the correct word, but you see what I mean). 

Year 9-13 students

Year 7 &b 8 students

Why is this exciting?

For Hornby High School, here is the 'kicker', as they say. Hornby High School did not follow that trend. There is NO profound drop that mirrors the data from secondary schools generally. The data does show students as rating their learning experience at Hornby High School as slightly lower than the sample overall against the 11 dimensions. This might be attributable to the ways in which we still, to some degree at least, separate out subjects, and the way we tend to focus more and more on 'the right answers' rather than thinking creatively as students head into their NCEA years. 

Here are the conclusions from the 2020 paper on creativity in schools:

In summary the data reveals:

• •New Zealand schools do not actively foster or encourage creative environments to support student learning.
• •Student perceptions of their school’s creative environment meaningfully declines across time.

• The frequency of opportunities to be curious declines throughout schooling.
• Children are less likely to take risks with their learning as they get older.
• By the end of secondary schooling the physical environments of schools become less creative.
• Children in schools have little time to be playful with ideas or to engage in
• imaginative processes.
• Learning increasingly becomes discipline siloed with decreasing opportunities tothink and work across knowledge boundaries.

• A correlation exists between student perceptions of creativity, enjoyment and learning.

• There are some meaningful differences between school’s creative environments.

• There appears to be some meaningful differences between teachers in schools using

  creative pedagogies impacting on enjoyment and participation levels.

As a Principal, I'm hardwired to speculate on why we see this result. Bearing in mind the likelihood of confirmation bias on my part, my speculation includes these thoughts:

• We have clarity of vision
• The vision is articulated often
• The vision is clearly encompassed in our pedagogy which itself is clearly articulated
• We spend time and money building our staff capability in understanding and enacting the pedagogy
• \We value and support risk taking
• Staff often model risk taking (and the concomitant vulnerability) in their work, and their actions
• As a kura we showcase and celebrate achievement and creativity, often
• We work hard to build human relationships with students
• Student culture is embraced and celebrated

 I could go on, but you get the idea.

This is something to be celebrated. I interpret this to mean that our collective work at Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka is indeed taking us in the right direction, we are indeed steering a course towards 'a centre of creative excellence'. Our staff team is 'on board', they are committed, they understand the coherence and consistency in what we are doing. 

In a word, they are 'awesome'. I am proud to be a part of the team!!!!!

Capturing our creative endeavour over a two week period

Walking around our kura campus this past couple of weeks, I had no difficulty capturing examples of creativity in student work. This post is more of a 'point in time' look at some of this wonderful work. Enjoy scrolling!!!!!

Sandstone carving - and as it progresses, some of this work is now looking pretty amazing. Look at the detail, and the form!!!

This wonderful work from junior students in their arts kete.

'Sales posters' up for a vote for 'best advert' in the staff room.

Yarny has been doing some amazingly creative drawing in his Art class. He gifted this beautiful piece to me and the school. Up close the fine detail is incredible, this photo doesn't do it justice.

Some more examples of Yarny's drawing.

And then this piece of work, a set of racks, all assembled/welded by hand .. a very creative piece of work as he 'problem solved' and learned the skills necessary to get angles correct.

And as part of our current Arts kete, a group of students opted to tackle some origami. This is Basty. Take a look at his wonderful pieces -  a 'Godzilla', and a dragon. The Commitment, Achievement, and Resilience, required to complete work this detailed work is outstanding. It develops creativity, and many other component parts of the front end of our curriculum.

And finally a few photos from our term 3 NCEA performance evening...

Finally this past week was 'maths Week', with lots of creative stuff happening amongst students and staff, as Juliet (HOD) declared it 'cre8ive maths' week. My own contribution was a maths limerick a day, like this one:

We see creativity abounding in our environment, creativity that in part comes naturally from the activities of our staff, and that in part comes from our focus on 'Learn Create Share' as our underlying pedagogy. mAnd you know what?  There's more than this happening everywhere.

You could say that most schools have this stuff going on, and you may well be right. What I will say of Hornby High School is that it happens across the curriculum because we are 'deliberate and intentional' about it (I frequently borrow that phrase from Gary Roberts, the fab Principal of Hornby Primary School), and we are as deliberate and intentional about it as we are because we have a coherent and consistent pedagogy that is well espoused, and increasingly widely understood amongst staff and students, all tied together with our vision as 'he puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence'.

It leads to engaged students, students whose sense of wellbeing is enhanced, and so students who are better prepared to then engage in the hard mahi around their reading, their writing, their maths, and their wider back end of the curriculum learning across the eight essential learning areas. When you add to that the focus on creativity in amongst the hard mahi of learning, and you are onto a winner.

Are we serious about this creativity thing? As my daughter used to say when in her teens, '"Damned straight" we are...